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“Stevie Wonder never had to use the word bitch to get his point across” (Kanye West on linguistics)

From a series of tweets on 2 Sept 2012:

@kanyewest: I usually never tweet questions but I struggle with this so here goes… Is the word BITCH acceptable?

@kanyewest: To be more specific, is it acceptable for a man to call a woman a bitch even if it’s endearing?

@kanyewest: Even typing it in question form it’s still feels harsh?

@kanyewest: Has hip hop conditioned us to accept this word? Do we love this word as much as we love the word NIGGA in an endearing way?

@kanyewest: correction, Here’s the age old question, would we refer to our mothers as bitches? Would’ we call our fathers niggers or better yet NIGGAS?

@kanyewest: If nigga is such a positive word, why do we feel so uncomfortable for white people to say it, even with a hall pass?

@kanyewest: Is it ok to use bitch as long as we put BAD in front of it? Like you a BAD BITCH

@kanyewest: Perhaps the words BITCH and NIGGA are now neither positive or negative. They are just potent and it depends on how the are used and by whom?

@kanyewest: What if there was no profanity… What if we decided to legalise profanity in a sense? In France they play songs with cursing on the radio

@kanyewest: Stevie Wonder never had to use the word bitch to get his point across

Source.

I wonder: Do musical stars get less interesting with age because they start to self-examine and second guess themselves?

19 Responses

  1. I agree, I think it makes him MORE interesting – not just because it is a sign of maturity, it also makes him different from the rest of the industry that tells us otherwise. It doesn’t matter to me if previously he was known for being overconfident of himself or degrading towards others.

  2. If you think calling me a bitch makes you interesting, you have suddenly become much less interesting to me.

    And since when is being thoughtful of others and open-minded toward feminism a mark of *conservatism*????

  3. RE the reason musicians often get less interesting with age:
    I’d say it has a lot more to do with complacency than introspection. The sort of self-guessing on display here has, to my mind, served his albums pretty well. I.e. as much as I liked College Dropout, I thought Twisted Fantasy was better.

  4. See, and I thought this was very interesting… it makes him more human! Which means, to me, that his next songs might be a little more real and a lot less cookie-cutter. Time will tell?

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